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Refactoring is the process of improving the design of existing code by changing its internal structure without affecting its external behaviour, with the main aims of improving the quality of software product. Therefore, there is a belief…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2015-02-13 S. H. Kannangara , W. M. J. I. Wijayanayake

Refactoring is one of the most important activities in software engineering which is used to improve the quality of a software system. With the advancement of deep learning techniques, researchers are attempting to apply deep learning…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-05-01 Bridget Nyirongo , Yanjie Jiang , He Jiang , Hui Liu

[Background] Refactoring has matured over the past twenty years to become part of a developer's toolkit. However, many fundamental research questions still remain largely unexplored. [Aim] The goal of this paper is to investigate the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-08-06 Steve Counsell , Mahir Arzoky , Giuseppe Destefanis , Davide Taibi

With the rapid development of deep learning, the implementation of intricate algorithms and substantial data processing have become standard elements of deep learning projects. As a result, the code has become progressively complex as the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Siqi Wang , Xing Hu , Bei Wang , Wenxin Yao , Xin Xia , Xinyu Wang

Context. Refactoring has been widely investigated in the past in relation to production code quality, yet still little is known on how developers apply refactoring on test code. Specifically, there is still a lack of investigation into how…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-08-21 Luana Martins , Valeria Pontillo , Heitor Costa , Filomena Ferrucci , Fabio Palomba , Ivan Machado

Context: Software refactoring aims to improve software quality and developer productivity. Numerous empirical studies investigating the impact of refactoring activities on software quality have been conducted over the last two decades.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-08-19 Satnam Kaur , Paramvir Singh

Open-source developers, particularly the elite developers, maintain a diverse portfolio of contributing activities. They do not only commit source code but also spend a significant amount of effort on other communicative, organizational,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-11-15 Zhendong Wang , Yang Feng , Yi Wang , James A. Jones , David Redmiles

Context. Code refactoring improves software quality without changing external behavior. Despite its advantages, its benefits are hindered by the considerable cost of time, resources, and continuous effort it demands. Aim. Understanding why…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-09-10 Mikel Robredo , Matteo Esposito , Fabio Palomba , Rafael Peñaloza , Valentina Lenarduzzi

Context: Technical Debt needs to be managed to avoid disastrous consequences, and investigating developers' habits concerning technical debt management is invaluable information in software development. Objective: This study aims to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-09-10 Zadia Codabux , Christopher Dutchyn

Context: Code refactoring is widely recognized as an essential software engineering practice that improves the understandability and maintainability of source code. Several studies attempted to detect refactoring activities through mining…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-02-07 Eman Abdullah AlOmar

Refactorings are transformations to improve the code design without changing overall functionality and observable behavior. During the refactoring process of smelly test code, practitioners may struggle to identify refactoring candidates…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-05-08 Luana Martins , Denivan Campos , Railana Santana , Joselito Mota Junior , Heitor Costa , Ivan Machado

Producing code of good quality is an essential skill in software development. Code quality is an aspect of software quality that concerns the directly observable properties of code, such as decomposition, modularization, and code flow. Code…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-11-06 Eduardo Carneiro Oliveira , Hieke Keuning , Johan Jeuring

Creating functions is at the center of writing computer programs. But there has been little empirical research on how this is done and what are the considerations that developers use. We design an experiment in which we can compare the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-09-05 Alexey Braver , Dror G. Feitelson

Refactoring is a practice widely adopted during software maintenance and evolution. Due to its importance, there is extensive work on the effectiveness of refactoring in achieving code quality. However, developer's intentions are usually…

Software refactoring aims at improving code quality while preserving the system's external behavior. Although in principle refactoring is a behavior-preserving activity, a study presented by Bavota et al. in 2012 reported the proneness of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-09-25 Massimiliano Di Penta , Gabriele Bavota , Fiorella Zampetti

Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure. Not only researchers, but also practitioners, need to know about past…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-08-08 Eunjong Choi , Kenji Fujiwara , Norihiro Yoshida , Shinpei Hayashi

Recent advances in coding agents have shown remarkable progress in software issue resolution. In practice, real-world issues are typically bug fixes or feature requests in which human developers naturally incorporate refactoring as part of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Zhao Tian , Zifan Zhang , Tao Xiao , Dong Wang , Masanari Kondo , Junjie Chen , Yasutaka Kamei

Context: Refactoring is the art of modifying the design of a system without altering its behavior. The idea is to reorganize variables, classes and methods to facilitate their future adaptations and comprehension. As the concept of behavior…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-07-23 Eman Abdullah AlOmar , Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer , Christian Newman , Ali Ouni

To meet project timelines or budget constraints, developers intentionally deviate from writing optimal code to feasible code in what is known as incurring Technical Debt (TD). Furthermore, as part of planning their correction, developers…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-03-14 Anthony Peruma , Eman Abdullah AlOmar , Christian D. Newman , Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer , Ali Ouni

Technical debt refers to the trade-offs between code quality and faster delivery, impacting future development with increased complexity, bugs, and costs. This study empirically analyzes the additional work effort caused by technical debt…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Kartik Gupta